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Saturday, March 30, 2013

A SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON MOVIE

MOVIE
REVIEW:

G.I.
JOE: RETALIATION

Starring:

Dwayne
“The Rock” Johnson

Adriana
Palicki

Channing
Tatum

G.I. Joe: Retaliation – Takes
place years after the last movie, and from the last movie we know that a Cobra
agent that goes by the name of, Zartan is disguised as the President of the
United States. He ceased the opportunity of jeopardizing the existence of the
G.I. Joes and let’s Cobra take over and wreak havoc around the globe.

I was very curious about G.I. Joe: Retaliation, I’m not very much
a fan of the last G.I. Joe movie. I thought the movie took itself too seriously
up to the point that the ideas of giving life to a toy line-turned cartoon
didn’t execute very well. The movie instead became a really bad commercial for
a toy line as it suffers from terrible direction and writing instead of putting
actual fun for the movie. The previews did show that this movie did learn its
lesson from the last movie but were all the lessons learned when this movie
finally gracing our screens?

So the big question here is that “is this better than the last
one?” I’m happy to say that the answer to that question is: yes -At some
degree. This movie is a popcorn-movie at its best, it has that self-aware writing,
over the top action that actually felt like a 3-part episode of G.I. Joe (the
show), it wasn’t necessarily shitty or a great movie, it was the type of fun
movie where you'd just "shut your brain off and just enjoy anything on
screen" type of fun and If you go in expecting more than that you will be
very disappointed.

There were still flaws from the last movie that did show on this
one, there were jokes here and there that didn’t really work out, there were
also un-needed scenes and some under-developed characters. The movie
surprisingly did have a better story to tell though in the second act of the
film there were a few stories where it made the movie feel convoluted and
confusing by the second act. The second act drastically became slow probably
because of the un-necessary dialogue at some point of the movie, they try to forcibly
“humanize” some characters but they didn’t really do it very well as result the
second act ended up having unnecessary scenes here and there. The movie did
have a couple of re-shoots, which explains 9 months of it being delayed.

To be really quick on the performances and the characters, I
thought there were some characters that had very little to do and it may be the
writing’s fault. Cobra Commander in this movie was very under-developed that it
felt like that he is someone in the background than a threat as if Destro would
be in the tv show and yet Zartan in disguise as the president is a bigger
threat and a very entertaining comical villain, he was so ludicrously cartoony
that it actually felt like an early morning tv show villain. Bruce Willis’ Joe
Colton was also under used; He’s also another character who is just there for
the sake of being there. But there’s another one of these characters but he
comes off as amusing and it is RZA, if you are disturbed than amused that a
black rapper is a Japanese-speaking master (who goes around a scene talking
with a Japanese accent) you will have a very difficult time when you watch his
scenes (I laugh my ass off every time he talks). And then, we have a character
called, Flint. Flint was a very uninteresting character in this movie, he
barely had personality in this movie and it felt like that he wasn’t needed in this
movie at all. To me they should’ve let Duke live and get him killed (Duke being
killed off is not much of a secret because of the trailers) off instead. Then
we have Adriana Palicki was just fine in this movie (Despite the fact that she
looked like a Victoria’s Secret model than a female soldier). But last but not
the least we have Dwayne Johnson; Dwayne Johnson is shaping up into a great
modern-day action hero. It shows in this movie, he was probably the one who did
shines in this movie.

With flaws aside, I enjoyed this movie for what it is. The action
scenes got me entertained despite the fact that there was a long break of
unnecessary dialogue in the middle of the movie. Every scene that has something
to do with ninjas (except for ninja scenes of RZA) probably has the best action
scenes in the movie. The movie was delayed for a 3D conversion and a series of
re-shoots to do so but I got late for the 3D screening and I end up seeing it
in 2D and I can tell from this movie that there aren’t really a lot of good
shots to get for the 3D version. I don’t think it was necessary to do this in
3D and be released in its original release. In the end, G.I. Joe: Retaliation
is almost everything the last movie should’ve been. It has enjoyable action
like the last one but it adopts that cartoony tone in a good way and it doesn’t
take itself really seriously, though the movie still had issues from the last
movie. I recommend this movie when this movie hits at matinee price in 2D than
3D.